Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Okay, up front I will say I have no pics.........yet! I had to take the day off and spend it with my little girl since she didn't have school yesterday due to the MLK Jr. holiday. We spent the day doing a few odd jobs together and running some errands. I even let her use a hammer while I held a nail setting punch. (Talk about trust!) She never missed the punch, not even once. Whew!

Well, anyway.............about that bike thing! Yeah, I basically got a deal I couldn't refuse on a new frame and fork that I will be replacing the On One frame and fork with....sort of. (I'll explain further) The bike is something you may never have heard of out of California by way of Taiwan. It's called "Blackbuck" and it's by a company called OS Bikes. The Blackbuck is the only model and it only comes in one size for now. Low and behold, that size fits me to a "T".

It is a single speed bike with a eccentric bottom bracket and about the only thing going for it at first glance is the highly arched seat stays. But that's just the most obvious thing, there are a lot more details that make the Blackbuck quite an interesting bike. I won't get into that right now. I'll be detailing all the subtleties on Twenty Nine Inches. I'll post some of that here too. For now suffice it to say that it is mostly painted in "Kerkove Nation Black" and we'll let it go at that. (Seems odd to say "black" in reference to Jeff these days though, since he is festooned in Ergon's neon pea green.)

This bike replaces the Inbred, as I stated. I'll be throwing on most of the gear from that bike over to the Blackbuck for racing purposes in '08. (Although I'll probably just ride it around a fair bit too) Here's where it gets interesting. The fork choices play a huge part in how the OS Bikes Blackbuck handles. It was designed with this in mind too. For instance, the bike comes with a non-suspension corrected rigid fork with 51mm offset. (!!!) The bike can also be mounted up with a standard 80mm travel Reba. To add to all of this, I am retaining the On One Superlight Carbon fork to use as a test on this bike which has 47mm offset and is suspension corrected. It'll be a fun test to see just what types of handling will result, since I have all three fork options at my disposal, plus I could play with a 44mm offset RST M-29 just to make it even more interesting.

Ahh! Mad scientist type experimenting! So.............like when is all of this snow going to be gone? And like, Get it warmer out there already, mmmmkay! I gotta ride! Stay tuned! More to come..........